Families of Russia Teacher's Guide
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Families of Russia Teacher’s Guide © 2010 Master Communications, Inc. Permission granted for distribution for classroom use only. 1 Table of Contents Introduction 2 Script to Families of the Russia 3 Glossary 9 Discussion 10 Questions 11 Answers 12 True and False Quiz 13 Introduction 15 The Land 15 The Climate 15 Plant and Animal Life 15 The People 15 History 16 Activities 19 Websites related Russia 19 Recipes from Russia 21 Appenix Map and Flag 23 Fact book on Russia 24 2 Russia Rural Script It’s 6 o’clock in the morning and grandmother’s already busy feeding our animals. We live in a small village called Retkino. (Red’kino with soft d) My name is Nicolai and I’m 10 years old. When the weather gets really cold, we're glad we don't have to go outside to take care of our animals. After grandpa died, grandma was lonely, so she asked mom and dad and my brother and me to come and live with her. We have a house in another village but for now we don’t use it. Living here is really good for us because mom and dad have jobs, and Grandma takes care of running the house while my parents are away at work. Grandma wakes me up at 7. By the time I get dressed mom and dad have already left for work. Grandma usually makes my breakfast. I’m having a sweet biscuit and a cup of tea with honey in it. This honey is from the beehives we keep in our backyard. The cat’s fixing his hair, and I do the same with mine. Grandma gives me some money to buy a snack at school. It takes me about twenty minutes to walk to school. I go to a public school, so my parents don’t have to pay for me to go there. My brother, Andrei, used to go to my school when he was my age. He’s 18 now, so he goes to a trade school where he learns how to make and fix things. I’m in 5th grade. We have 23 kids in our class. Our first class is math. Everyone in Russia thinks education is important, and our teacher says 98%, or almost all Russians, can read and write. When we need a break we do some exercises. Then we’re ready to settle down and concentrate again. While I’m in class my mom’s at work in the hospital. If the hospital building needs to have something fixed, they call mom and she arranges to have the work done. She makes sure the building and equipment are always working, so the doctors and nurses can just help sick people get well. My dad’s an electrician. When he’s not working on a job, he reads the latest safety regulations in the office. Today Dad’s going out to change a burned out street light. To climb up the pole, he uses special clamps that fasten to his shoes. For safety, he fastens a belt around himself and the pole. If the clamps break, the safety belt will 3 help him hold onto the pole. Dad says this wouldn’t be a good job for a person who’s afraid of heights! This pole is near our house, so Dad goes home to have lunch with grandma. Whenever grandma fixes smoked fish she has interested friends watching her. Our cats, Mur’ka and Sen’ya, think it’s time for them to eat, too. Grandma gives Senya the fish’s tail. Dad finishes lunch with a cup of tea. He sweetens it with jam that grandma made with strawberries from our garden. When I come home from school, I take off my shoes. Here in Russia we always wear slippers in the house and leave our outdoor shoes in the front hall. Lunch is almost ready. I’m having rabbit, bread, potatoes, fish and fru it juice called sok. We have potatoes with almost every meal. After lunch I do my eye exercises. A muscle in one of my eyes is weak, which makes it hard for me to read. Wearing glasses helps, but I still need to do these exercises to help make the eye muscle stronger. Grandma covers my strong eye when I read so the weak eye gets used to working harder. I exercise my eye for half an hour a day. My big treat after school is to ride my motorcycle. I look forward to it all day. While I’m riding Andrei and dad go to the grocery store. Andrei usually does the grocery shopping. Andrei pays for the groceries with rubles. The clerk would rather add with the abacus than with her calculator. The abacus has been used for thousands of years. Some people can do math on an abacus faster than on a computer! When they get back, dad cuts firewood with his chain saw. This wood isn’t for heating our house, because houses in our village are heated from one big furnace that burns a kind of coal called peat. Pipes carry the heat to all the houses in the village. Mom says most new villages in Russia heat homes this way. Dad’s cutting wood to heat our family’s banya, which is like a steam bath or sauna. Most people go to banya every week. Some people go to public banyas, but we have our own. Getting it ready is a big job. It takes a couple of hours for the fire to heat water above the wood stove. The fire also heats an oven filled with rocks. When we go to banya we’ll pour water on the hot rocks to make steam. While Dad waits for the water to heat, he works in our greenhouse. The sun heats the greenhouse so it’s warmer than outside. In very early spring, when the weather’s still too cold for plants to grow in the garden, we plant vegetable seeds in little pots i n the 4 warm greenhouse. The plants can grow here until later in the spring, when it’s warm enough to plant them in the garden. The greenhouse gives plants more time to grow, which is important because Russia has short summers and long, cold winters. My parents say most families in Russia have a garden to raise their own food. A lot of city people have small houses and gardens in the country where they can go during their vacation and on weekends. Families enjoy spending time outside and working together in the garden. Grandma says having a garden is especially important now, because a lot of change is taking place in our country and it’s not always easy to buy things in stores. Russia used to be a communist country called the USSR. Since 1991 Russia has been changing into a democratic country. That’s a hard thing to do in a short time. Grandma says the changes made life pretty hard for a while, but she thinks things are getting better. Our family doesn’t have to buy very much food because we have our own meat and eggs, and we grow our own fruit and vegetables. Cabbages and potatoes will last all winter if we keep them cool. We store our cabbages in the corner of our garage, where they’ll be cold but won’t freeze. Under the garage is a secret chamber …well it’s not really secret…but it’s a chamber… where we store our potatoes. We can tomatoes and several different kinds of fruit that we’ve grown. Canning means heating the food to kill any germs or bacteria and then sealing the jar so no air can get in. Food can last several years that way. We try to make things instead of buying them whenever we can. Andrei built his own tool called a lathe that he uses to shape things from wood. The lathe spins the wood around while Andrei uses a chisel to cut the wood. Andrei made this candleholder last month at his school. Making things from wood is a tradition in our area of Russia. This craftsman is making a wooden bowl on a lathe. He cuts away wood from the outside of the block to make a round, bowl shape. Next he cuts a bottom into the bowl. Then he hollows out to make the inside of the bowl. If he takes out too much wood, he’ll go right through the side of the bowl. Now he’s fitting a piece of wood for a lid. It’s time to cut off the bowl. The craftsman will make several more bowls from the wood that’s still left on the lathe. Painters decorate the bowls and lots of other wooden things, like boxes and icons. I think painting icons like this would be the hardest. Icons are religious pictures painted on small flat pieces of wood. I have an icon of St. Nicolai, who I was named after, hanging over my desk in my bedroom. Grandma says St. Nicolai will watch over me and protect me. 5 I usually have about an hour and a half of homework a night. When I get stuck, grandma helps me with my math. She’s really good at it. She says it’s because she’s learned math four times:…..Once when she was a girl, then when she helped my mom, again when she helped Andrei, and now when she helps me! When I finish my homework it’s time for our banya.